


knight fall

by mitzvahmelting



Category: Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Identity Issues, post-arkham knight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 11:18:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8160281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitzvahmelting/pseuds/mitzvahmelting
Summary: “What did you do,” he grunts over the sound of the rain, “What did you do to my father?”





	

When Nightwing tracks a Blüdhaven truck shipping armaments across the Pioneers Bridge, and he catches a glimpse of Batman – a night-black form with ears, looming atop one of the spires of the bridge, silhouetted with a cliché flash of lightning and then gone the next moment – he takes a deep breath, and then another, and then a third, and he’s okay, and he does his job. Tracks the illegal arms. Gets evidence against the buyers.

It’s just like those three years when he and Bruce weren’t talking. He’d seen glimpses of the Bat then, too. Figments of his imagination, ghost-like figures that appear in his peripheral vision just because he’s wishing too hard.  It’s worse now, because it’s not just _he’s not talking to me_ but rather _he’s gone_ , gone, whatever that means.

He doesn’t know for sure that Bruce is dead, exactly, but he at least knows that Bruce is gone.

_“This is the end. This is the last time we meet.”_

Nightwing doesn’t cry in costume. Dick comes home to the loft, though, and his emotions get the better of him the moment he takes off the mask. He’s lost count of how many times he’s broken down since watching his childhood home explode on national television, complete annihilation, the destruction of everything that had once been theirs, on repeat behind his eyelids and in his nightmares.  It isn’t the purported deaths of Bruce and Alfred that bothers him, because Dick is under no illusions that the explosion was anything but planned. Rather, it is the knowledge that there is no more Wayne Manor. 

No more afternoon tea with Alfred at the little kitchen nook with the mismatched antique chairs and the china sets that were manufactured before even Bruce’s grandparents were born. No more helping Bruce sit through in-house charity galas with snark behind the patrons’ backs, too-tight bowties and champagne and the anticipation of patrol, the camaraderie of _they don’t know who we are, they don’t know what we do._

It’s not the loss of memories to the steady passage of time; it’s the entire background of Dick’s adolescence suddenly demolished in hellfire. On camera.

The next time he crosses the bridge into Gotham, wouldn’t you know it, there’s another ghost of a Bat jumping rooftops about half a mile away from Nightwing’s position where he’s scouting another trade between gangs from opposite sides of the river. It slips quickly out of Nightwing’s field of view, and Nightwing thinks that that his subconscious probably gets a kick out of methodically peeling away layers of the skin of his chest around his heart, because that’s what this specter makes him feel like.

The third time – and now, now it’s been months. Barbara and Tim are both fully recovered, Gordon was elected _mayor_ – Nightwing sees Batman in the middle of a nasty storm, the rain coming down like someone hung the entire Atlantic Ocean over their heads and shook it.  Maybe the rain that obscures Nightwing’s vision allows the mirage to remain intact.  Among the roar of raindrops hitting concrete, he chases his Kevlar-clad White Rabbit across Gotham’s tenement houses and past Amusement Mile, soaring over the shipping yards, and as the gap between them begins to close, Nightwing’s heart starts to beat so much faster, his eyes begin to burn.

He corners Batman on the roof of St. Joseph Cathedral, one of the buildings they’d rarely landed on because its gates and fences kept it far from the streets they were patrolling. It _is_ actually Batman, in the flesh, the rain running down his cowl just as it streams down Nightwing’s armor. The man doesn’t reveal anything in his body language, not even the reluctance that Nightwing had expected.  If anything, he seems resigned to whatever unpleasantness Nightwing is going to confront him with.

The voice sounds lower than Nightwing remembers, but perhaps it is distorted by the weather, when Batman says, “I’d hoped you wouldn’t follow me.”  Nightwing doesn’t really hear his words, just the voice.  Brings back memories of themed villains and car chases and the thrill of gaining Batman’s praise even in its most obscure forms.

“I don’t think I even have the energy to be upset with you,” Nightwing shouts to be heard over the sudden roll of thunder.  All he wants is to return home with this man, or at least to wherever home is now.  “I knew you weren’t dead, but that doesn’t make the radio silence hurt any less.”

“Nightwing…” says the Batman voice, like a warning, like an impending reprimand. 

“You could have at least kept in _touch,_ Bruce, I…” and Nightwing jabs his fingers at the bat on the other man’s armor, and he’s getting rainwater in his mouth as he talks, “that wasn’t fair _,_ you _scared_ me! You really… you really scared me.”

Lightning. Thunder, so fast, because the storm is right above them, and they really shouldn’t be hanging around on rooftops with metal-plated armor in the middle of a thunderstorm, but, then again, it is hardly the first time. This is what their lives are like, _were_ like.  Nightwing’s stomach turns when Batman finally pushes Nightwing’s fingers away, grip impersonal.  “I’d hoped you wouldn’t follow me, because this will be hardest for you.”

Nightwing rolls his eyes, “I have to tell you, Bruce, things haven’t been all that easy-”

“Dick.” The way he says it, completely devoid of even the slightest ounce of affection, stops Nightwing from saying anything more. It’s a tone of voice he hasn’t heard in years, the sort of tone that would give him nightmares as a kid, worried that someday a villain would take over Batman’s head and send him after Robin, venomous and efficient and deadly and cruel like Robin was just another criminal. Batman just looks at him, and finally says, “You need to understand something: Bruce Wayne is dead.”

Everything is too loud in Nightwing’s ears. He cocks his head to the side. “I understand that.”

Batman shakes his head, “I don’t think you do.”

“Yes, I do,” Nightwing shouts, and maybe the rain is drowning him out, maybe Batman just isn’t _listening._ “Your identity was compromised, so you had the _genius_ idea to fake your own death without telling anyone out of some misguided attempt to protect the rest of us.  But, Bruce, that _doesn’t_ give you the right to completely dis-”

“Have you spoken with Tim.” That’s a question, but it doesn’t sound like a question in Batman’s voice. “Has he explained to you what happened at the asylum.”

Shivers. Rain like ice water. Joker. _He wasn’t okay, Dick. There was something wrong with him. He locked me up._

“What, with Crane?” Nightwing responds too quickly, “He overdosed you with the fear toxin, you, you overcame it, and-”

“I did overcome the fear toxin, Dick,” Batman’s gaze is level, his voice unusually clear and distinct as he enunciates every syllable, “but Bruce Wayne did not.”

The sheets of rain slow to a more consistent shower.  Despite the heat control of his suit, Nightwing feels unbearably cold, like he’s going into shock. A smile, almost like a grimace, breaks onto his face. “You’re so,” he says, rueful, anxious, memories of all of the worst times with Batman running through his head, “you always manipulate us, with your, your cryptic symbolism or whatever. Quit messing with me, B.”

The hiss of the cowl unlocking. Batman removes it, and his face is bare in the rain then, the wetness further slicking his hair in place of the sweat. 

There is nothing on his face. Absolutely nothing. It’s Bruce’s face (and oh it makes Dick’s heart ache to see him again, after so long, how this is the man who was there when Mom and Dad fell, this is the man who taught Robin how to fight and cuddled Dick through a marathon of _The Godfather)_ but Bruce isn’t there – empty, intelligent eyes. Empty handsome face. Empty. The face Dick used to see in his nightmares.

“Bruce Wayne is dead,” Batman repeats, carefully.

Nightwing still has the grimace-smile on his face.  He stares at Batman, at the deadness, the shell, the husk, the carcass, and his smile widens, and hurts, and then he’s snarling and _slam,_ shoving Batman against the cathedral’s bell tower, “What did you do,” he grunts over the sound of the rain, _“What did you do to my father?”_

“Stand _down,_ Nightwing,” demands Batman.

“Who are you, what are you,” Nightwing pants, everything too loud and cold and wet, holding his arm against the Batman’s throat and nearly losing his footing on the slick shingles of the roof.  Batman doesn’t flinch, barely acknowledges the threat.  He does not fear death.

“No man can withstand the amount of fear toxin the Scarecrow pushed into Bruce’s veins. It was too much for him to endure – too much for even the remnants of the Joker’s consciousness to endure. I was all that remained.” Batman stares down at Nightwing impassively as he speaks. “I enacted the Knightfall Protocol not just because Wayne’s identity had been compromised, but also in the hope that you and the others would only remember him as a good man. It is what he would have wanted.”

Shaking, Nightwing’s shouts directly at the man’s face, “What are you talking about, this doesn’t make any – _Bruce,_ Bruce, please, this is nonsense, just. Talk to me. Please, I-”

The hand that would, in other circumstances, cup the side of Dick’s face and caress his cheek in paternal fondness now, instead, lands heavy and impersonal on his shoulder, as the other hand pushes his arm away to alleviate the chokehold.  “Dick,” says Batman, “I’m sorry.” And maybe there’s the flicker of something in his eyes, or maybe that’s just another White Rabbit, probably is, with all the rain. Nightwing doesn’t cry in costume.

_“I’m proud of you, Dick.”_

His throat is closing up. Thunder rolls loud overtop of them.  It wasn’t just about the Manor, it was _never_ about the manor, it was about – it was about - “Don’t be stupid, we can – we can _fix_ this, Bruce,” but Batman is pushing him away, settling the cowl back into place, like Dick is some eager victim desperate to give thanks to the specter of the night who deigned to protect him, “no, Bruce, please, let me help, Bruce, stop-”

“I have to go, now.” Batman says, as gently as the vigilante can manage, like he’s speaking to someone who is so afraid, like he would like to assuage that fear but doesn’t know how and doesn’t have the time, “There is work to be done.”

“Stop, wait, no, we can – Bruce, don’t – _Bruce!”_ Nightwing’s voice is a scream, then, loud and broken and sounding nothing like himself.

But Batman has already disappeared back into the night.

 

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by this arkham knight theory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pI-jPNH0Go


End file.
